


stare a little louder, why don't you?

by bangbang_dear



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: JoshNeku, M/M, just a pure au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:01:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25994137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bangbang_dear/pseuds/bangbang_dear
Summary: Republish from my Tumblr blog. AU where Joshua is mute and everything is love.
Relationships: Kiryu "Joshua" Yoshiya/Sakuraba Neku
Comments: 2
Kudos: 42





	stare a little louder, why don't you?

**When his hair sweeps his desk, he thinks about morning sunlight first touching down on the horizon.**

Everything about the boy who sits across the aisle speaks volumes, and Neku can’t stop listening. He’s a tiny person who makes himself tinier when he concentrates; he crosses his ankles, tucks them beneath his chair, folds the rest of himself forward. His eyes follow his scrawling, racing pen with an acuity like a typewriter carriage snapping from right to left. 

Neku has never seen someone who writes so quickly yet so _fluidly_. Sable ink flows without a smudge, looping and undulating and winding the same way ripples cross a lake and hit shore. When he dots his I’s, it’s with pointed gusto, and when he crosses his T’s, it’s a stroke across violin strings. His lips are an unwavering line of blush, and that–makes them so _embarrassingly_ easy to watch.

He was reduced to an all-consuming stupor the day that, without prior prompt, a paper was rotated into his vision. The author himself hadn’t spared him a glance, and it had left him mystified– _dumbfounded_ , rather–to think it had been purposeful. The gesture made an unfortunate lot more sense once the stars cleared from his vision. 

_‘You’re staring.’_

… Joshua was a highly verbose, vibrant point of focus in his otherwise dire routine. He communicates galaxies from his gaze and globes from his fingertips. His vocal chords, however, are barren. 

Joshua Kiryu was born mute, and somehow he _never shuts up_. He’s a constant tug on Neku’s sleeve; he’s the person stealing his left earphone; he’s the doodles of hearts and emoticons and “hi!!” up and down his arm. He’s the boy who sees it fit to pause his entire world for one peck on the lips. 

Neku isn’t fantastic at sign language, but he’s mastered the art of making him smile. He’s filled half a notebook from margin to margin with cartoon antics penned between the two of them. 

Cartoon Joshua’s trademark feature was a prominent squiggle protruding from the side of his head. When first confronted with this, Joshua’s eyes had narrowed inquisitively, and he had pointed to it with a befuddled smile on his face. He was asking ‘what the everloving fuck is this?’ That was the day he had leaned far back in his chair, examined his own fluffy head in a cabinet window, and become self-aware right before Neku’s eyes. 

In kind, Joshua exercised creative brilliance in branding Cartoon Neku with Perpetual Grumpy Face. A permanent frown and eyebrows furrowed in utmost displeasure. Any alternative display of emotion was denoted exclusively in thought bubbles. Joshua was far more talented as a poet than an artist, but Neku found himself adoring every single freckle he dotted on his 2-D face.

Joshua’s presence in his life embodied a sickening, bubbly happiness. The boy was fond particularly of tracing every crease sectioning Neku’s palms, regardless of how badly Neku needed that hand for other things. The way he grinned unyielding at all protests, it–warmed him. It _melted_ him. Neku was a puddle of a man where Joshua was concerned.

And it struck him to his core, with fear as much as affection. Joshua had such a– _look_ sometimes. Intent and cutting and dissecting him into soul, mind, body. Taking the pieces of him one by one and pinning them into corkboard. Neku didn’t have secrets, but under Joshua’s piercing stare, his mind scrambled and screamed, “ _He knows! **He knows!**_ ”

And when he smiled, everything inside Neku slammed against his rib cage, begging to escape and hold onto him. There was so much _inside_ his smile. There were catty upticks, wavers of bewilderment, affection soft and hesitant. His parted lips somehow communicated every word otherwise deadened by malformed vocal chords. Joshua bore his soul in microscopic script only Neku could see.

The memory of confronting Joshua with his feelings still seared him through with embarrassment. He couldn’t have been more tactless if he tried. 

_“Hey, can we talk?”_ Neku had asked. He had rehearsed the line all week, and it had never occurred to him even once that it would be met with a sarcastic, deadpan glower.

_“ **Fuck** , I mean–can I talk to you–and you–listen?”_

Months later, Joshua was the boy who fell asleep in Neku’s lap at friend gatherings, and Neku shushed the entire room to listen to his tiny nasal snores. He was the boy who revolted and horrified Neku through text messages, because he looked so damned _innocent_ in person. He was the boy whose mother squeezed him tight, thanking him often for alleviating her son’s loneliness. He was the boy who sighed and gasped when his neck was kissed, who looked him longingly in the eyes to convey desire.

He was–everything. He was so quiet to everyone else, but to Neku, Joshua was the loudest music he had ever heard.


End file.
